We purposely left Sunday morning free to meet up with Kim and Jules, who proposed lunch at a pub on the Thames. To get out there we took the Tube to the Kew Garden station and met up at Tap on the Line pub for a quick drink, then took an Uber to The Bell & Crown for Sunday roast.

We arrived promptly at noon and discovered Kim had booked us a lovely Thames River view table. Our waiter was charming and I was pleased to see the menu was a la carte. I went for the traditional beef roast while Eric chose the butternut squash soup and helped me out with my Yorkshire pudding. :) We each enjoyed a (large) glass of wine and the relaxed company.

They needed the table back by 3pm, so we snapped a quick photo along the chilly Thames and then it was time to part ways. Until next time!

The Australian Open, known locally as ‘the tennis,’ was a motivating factor for our trip. However, tickets didn’t go on sale until October, so we had to wait 7 months after reserving our flights before we would know if we’d have seats in the main stadium. We jumped online the moment tickets went on sale (at our friend Andrew’s house!) and were lucky to get the times we wanted, namely the second Monday night session and the day session on Tuesday.

Our apartment was very close to the stadium so we simply walked (up Batman Drive) to the stadium. Security was light, mostly interested in glass and cameras with lenses larger than 200mm. Rod Laver arena looked nice in the late afternoon sun.

The outside air was pleasantly cool and dry but inside the stadium the humidity was definitively higher, and that was with an open roof.

the famous blue court!

Serena Williams vs. Maria Kirilenko were first up in a 4th round match.

The second night match featured Roger Federer vs. Milos Raonic.

Our first impressions of the Australia Open – decent energy at night, and we found most people to be very snacky – nearly everyone had brought food and people were constantly going to the concession stands for more.

The next day we were back at the stadium for the 11a start. When Leandra was purchasing the tickets they offered shaded seating for a slightly higher price and it turned out to be a wise decision with a bright sunny day ahead of us.

The first match of the day featured a quarterfinal between Li Na vs. Agnieszka Radwanska.

The sun burned through the morning clouds by the end of the match that Li Na won. Nicolás Almagro vs. David Ferrer was the second match of the day and probably the best we saw at the Open. As you can see, the court was quite bright in the early afternoon.

Both players battled hard and put on a great show with Ferrer eking out a win in the end.

The third and final match on Rod Laver was a quarterfinal match-up of Maria Sharapova vs Ekaterina Makarova.

We had a feeling this would be an uneventful match for Sharapova and left after she won the first set easily. It turned out we were right as she won 6-2, 6-2.

We enjoyed walking around the grounds as they are quite busy with sponsor tents, music events, a beer garden and more.

As you can tell from the video we travelled quite a bit in 2012, eventually racking up 83,755 total air miles on four airlines (American Airlines, British Airlines, Sky Airlines (Chile), and Southwest).

Our travels took us to several states and 8 countries including Spain, Chile, Israel, Canada, Finland, Estonia, Belgium, and three trips through the UK.

For 2013 we are set to continue our travels with two booked trips to new cities in Europe as well as our upcoming Australia/Asia adventure! Check out the right sidebar to keep up with our future adventures.

Ava was a sleeping angel until she had warm water poured over her head. No surprise there. Please note the lovely dress that Lynn made for the special occasion. She used my mom’s old wedding dress, preserving much of the original lace design in the new iteration.

It was Saturday and all of Mike’s family is from Michigan, so of course, we ended the day with UM football (what a crazy exciting end to that game)! All the rest of the photos from Saturday are on Flickr.